


I'm Not in Love

by Supreme_Thunder



Category: Free!
Genre: Angst, M/M, Short One Shot, because I wanted to throw up some angst, just pure unadulterated angst, very short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-25 02:48:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2605778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Supreme_Thunder/pseuds/Supreme_Thunder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sousuke Yamazaki thinks back on his short-lived relationship with Makoto Tachibana (who is never named directly), understanding what it means to lose someone before realizing he loved them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Not in Love

**Author's Note:**

> Because I wanted to procrastinate and I wanted to type some angst. It's crap, don't read it, turn back now.  
> Fic. title from "Not in Love" (the Crystal Castles ft. Robert Smith one).

I met him in the fall.

Bare branches, short days, the sun-warmed wind stealthily chilling as night fell. Dead grass and spent flowers everywhere.

It should have been a warning of some kind, but I was never good at reading signs.

He was distant and serene, glowing angelic in the light of the fading autumn sun, chalcedony yellow, pouring in through the glass window. It got all caught up in his hair, transmuting the dull brown to glimmering gold. And his eyes- those irises that turned into summer seas, jade flecked with diamantine shards.

It cut my heart to pieces just looking at him.

What were the first words we said to each other?

I don’t recall.

But I will never be rid of that smile of his, the way his soft pink lips curved, and how his eyes closed as if trying to hold back the overflowing happiness he felt when he was with me.

I won’t forget the whisper-thin voice telling me little, pointless secrets at night.

I won’t forget the way his hand felt in mine, fingers clasped, palms a little sweaty, gripping so hard, so afraid of letting go.

I won’t forget the way he sighed my name the first time we were together. The salty-sweet taste of him, the way his scent made my mind blank out, made me do all kinds of things I never thought myself capable of- a charmed serpent so wrapped up in the music he unwittingly played to me.

**********

By the time the first of the snowflakes drifted down from the greying sky, he was mine.

So thoroughly, completely mine. And I thought I would always keep him.

I didn’t even think to give him myself in return.

I didn’t think he’d want me.

His words were sweet as saké, and I was drunk on them.

Through the bone-chill winter, I used up his heated blood to keep myself from freezing.

He said my eyes were oceans of ice. He said he was drowning in them. He kissed me and it tasted a little like sorrow felt.

**********

I brought him flowers on a whim.

They were white and almost scentless. Like my cowardly love.

He filled a glass vase with water and placed them in the sun- so careful to preserve their frigid beauty.

He smiled, but his eyes kept looking at me.

The world was a haze of pink petals and feigned dreams of young love, making me nauseous.

When I held him, he left the windows open. We lay together, trying not to let go, trying so hard to dream pastel dreams, sweet and shallow. The moon’s silvery glow shone through him, as if he were already a fading memory. Our mutual loss drifted in with a gust of wind from the east. As he fell asleep, he let go of my hand. I held him even as he turned away. I held him as I saw a shadow fall swiftly across the pristine lunar face, disappearing just as quickly. I held him as he slept a dreamless sleep.

Before dawn light woke him, I left.

**********

The stifling summer air in an overcrowded city. I remained behind in the heat and the frustrated humidity.

I don’t know if stayed or went home.

I was better off without him. Wasn’t that true?

I couldn’t give him my heart, and he never asked for it either.

He’d always known.

The trains I traveled by during the day and the strangers I slept with in the night became familiar. Patterns and predictability. The taste of mediocre beer, warm and unpleasant. But it did the job, didn’t it?

Sometimes, even now, I wake up at night, the heat making the sheets stick to my sweaty skin, clutching at my chest. The ache is unbearable and I feel like it will claim me and kill me.

Some paths cross and never cross again.

Some threads, red as blood, snap and break under the weight of unspoken passion and misshapen love.

I don’t miss him.

I haven’t lost him.

He was never mine.

**********

I saw him again, years later, again as the leaves changed color.

Again his hair was burning gold in the setting sun, and his eyes were jade seas in the summer.

There was a hand in his hand. And he smiled with his eyes held shut fast again.

And I knew that my heart was broken.

In the deepening gloom of a late evening in autumn, I learned what it meant to be lost at sea. 

Without a hope. Without a chance.

The love I had been saving up so carefully, so anxiously, broke loose all at once. But it couldn’t reach him across the faceless crowd across the concrete river, as we walked away from each other, passing by carelessly. Seeing but not stopping to look.  

As night fell over the city, I fell asleep with my window open, hoping for love to fly swiftly back in with the rising moon.

Green eyes and a closed-up smile.

If I had you now, I would give you everything, everything.

When I fall asleep, my dreams are dark and empty, filled with nothing.

Too late.

It’s better to pretend I was never in love.

Isn’t it?


End file.
